The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Latest Episodes:

History of Science & Technology Q&A (September 4, 2024) Oct 04, 2024

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: When, for you, was a computational approach introduced to the scientific process or the scientific culture? - Who began the trend of naming discoveries, inventions, etc. after yourself? - Became clear? How? Pretty sure no one ever solved the three-body equation. - Commentary about naming conventions. - The Trojan asteroids are named after characters from the Trojan War in Greek mythology because of the convention that started with the discovery of the first few such asteroids near Jupiter. These asteroids occupy stable Lagrangian points (L4 and L5) in Jupiter's orbit, and astronomers decided to name them after heroes from the Trojan War, with those at L4 being named after Greek heroes and those at L5 named after Trojan heroes. - Any planned work with tungsten? - Regarding naming, is there are good naming convention is computer languages? - What's your view of innovation in economic science? We are nearly 250 years since Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. - Recall the idea of "Recapitate" instead of "Apply."

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (August 30, 2024) Oct 01, 2024

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: What are your thoughts on machine learning to create new genera? Like what would be a good way to go about doing something like that? Like a new genera of plants/animals? - Can you talk about the future of information gathering and research? Say I am discussing with a robot a paper I am writing and the robot is providing examples and evidence to support my arguments–do I cite the robot as my source? Or do I have to find where the robot got the information? - How advanced do you think AI available to consumers (like ChatGPT) will be by August 2029? - Hello, Dr. Wolfram. My name is Grace and I'm currently preparing to pursue a PhD in fiber science. My research interests lie at the intersection of computational materials science and sustainable textile innovation. I have a background in pharmaceutical sciences. I've recently been exploring how advanced computational methods can be applied to fiber science, specifically in developing smart and sustainable textiles. How do you foresee quantum computing impacting the modeling and simulation of complex fibers and polymers? - What's your take on integrating memory into LLMs to enable retention across sessions? How could this impact their performance and capabilities? - What are your intuitions about the AI-generated fake content to deceive people, whether using deep fake face swaps or voice cloning or one or more things combined? Are we rapidly approaching a point where we won't be able to trust anything on the internet? - When do you expect the discovery of life on an exoplanet? - Is the hype around LLMs dying, finally relegating the toys to the toy box where they belong, or do you think anyone will ever be able to make them useful and accurate? - Do you think future cars will be able to get rid of wheels? - What algorithms changed the world the most? What's the next algorithm that will change the world? How does one release such an algorithm so that the result is positive?

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (August 28, 2024) Oct 01, 2024

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa

Questions include: Do you only collect books that you find useful/actually read? Or do you have some books that are there purely for "looks"? - On the current topic of books, to what extent have you transitioned to electronic books and reading, if at all, and how do you foresee physical books fitting your workflow and life going forward? - You seem to enjoy what you do with your business very much. I'm curious what you enjoy to do for a good vacation with regard to managing life? - Saw your driver's license on X! What's the biggest difference between UK and US driving? Which do you prefer? - For me the best, I would like to have both the physical book and the audiobook version. The audiobook helps to have a bit passive osmosis-like way to absorb the content, and I can go to parts that I am still confused about in the physical book. But the ability to search what you hear in the audiobook should be an option. - What is the key to a happy/content life in your opinion? - What would be the best arrangement in an innovation setting that collaboration won't create a conflict about who would get what credit? - Have you tried the Daylight computer yet? - Did you ever raise money for your company? It seems you've maintained freedom far better than other entrepreneurs. - Happy early birthday! Do you "feel" your age? You seem surprisingly active for retirement age. - I can't see the point of retiring. If you do what you love, then why stop? - I help people to retire. I would suggest that, if your job is stressful, retirement is strongly correlated with better health. - I am a baker by trade. I wanted to do mathematics when I was a teen but dropped out. Stephen's programs were a huge inspiration for me back in the late 90s. I am now in my 40s and looking to go back into maths and engineering. - What is your choice of birthday cake flavor? - Brain vascularization/oxygenation (through exercise) is such an underappreciated competitive advantage in cognitively demanding fields. - When I went to Switzerland, I indulged in the chocolate frequently!

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [August 23, 2024] Sep 27, 2024

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: What is machine learning in layman's terms? - What do you think about opossums? Mine is getting big, it is over 3 pounds now! - What do you think about thermodynamic computing? As pursued by companies like Extropic AI and Normal Computing. - How does water vapor work? When the sun shines on the ocean it doesn't get to 100 degrees, so how does the water escape being a liquid and rise up to the clouds? - What's your intuition for the future of ML after your most recent blog post? - What is the simplest form of machine learning? The hardest? - What's the difference between volume, weight and mass?

History of Science & Technology Q&A (August 21, 2024) Sep 27, 2024

Show notes

Questions include: Recent thoughts on history - Was SMP or Mathematica inspired by LISP and what are the pros and cons of LISP-like languages? - Was the decision to have Mathematica untyped unlike something like Lean (proof checker) a good decision for usability or would you do it differently today? - Type-checking always felt like dimensional analysis. - Was your idea to use "transformations on symbolic expressions" a sudden insight after reading, say, Schönfinkel on combinators, or did it follow from working out atoms of computation, something else? - What is the history of lazy evaluation? - Have you come up with any new theories of human reasoning from working on Mathematica and computation?

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (August 16, 2024) Sep 23, 2024

Show notes

Questions include: What do you view as the best strategies for reducing or eliminating hallucination/confabulation right now? Is there any chance that we'll be able to get something like confidence levels along with the responses we get from large language models? - I love this topic (fine tuning of LLMs); it's something I'm currently studying. - The AI Scientist is an LLM-based system that can conduct scientific research independently, from generating ideas to writing papers and even peer-reviewing its own work. How do you see this technology impacting the development of Wolfram|Alpha and other knowledge-based systems in the future? - It's fascinating the difference in response from LLMs/as to how you pose your questions. - I have found that giving key terms and then asking the LLM to take the "concepts" and relate them a particular way seems to work pretty well. - How we are going to formalize the language structures arising from this microinformatization, which was capable of creating such a semantic syntax that we had not observed through structuralism? - Why is being rude and "loud" to the model always the most efficient way to get what you want if the one-shot fails? I notice this applies to nearly all of them. I think it's also in the top prompt engineering "rules." I always feel bad even though the model has no feelings, but I need the proper reply in the least amounts of questions. - AI Scientist does what you're describing. The subtle difference is that it is generating plausible ideas, creating code experiments and then scoring them–question is whether this approach can/should be extended with Alpha? - How soon do you think we'll have LLMs that can retrain in real time? - What's your take on integrating memory into LLMs to enable retention across sessions? How could this impact their performance and capabilities? - Do you think computational analytics tools are keeping up with the recent AI trends? - Would it be interesting to let the LLM invent new tokens in order to compress its memories even further? - Philosophical question: if one posts a Wolfram-generated plot of a linear function to social media, for media is math, should it be tagged "made with AI"? It's a social media's opinion probably–just curious. A math plot is objective, so different than doing an AI face swap, for example. - For future archeologists–this stream was mostly human generated. - Professor_Neurobot: Despite my name, I promise I am not a bot.

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (August 14, 2024) Sep 23, 2024

Show notes

Questions include: Can you tell us more about your book collection (or your artifact or art collection)? - How does a "dashboard/portal" webpage as you show sometimes, with lists and links to your projects, and such tools, fit in your workflow and daily routines? - Stephen, are you also the CTO of Wolfram Research? What are the characteristics of a good CTO? - Do you find video calls draining? - What is the Wolfram software continuity plan in the event something happens to you? You are so instrumental in the development of this software, so your absence would be a hard gap to fill. - Did you have a mentor while creating your business? Do you find mentors useful? - Faces distract from logic because we spend too long assessing people's emotions. - Just wanted to share my personal Mathematica "story." I learned to know Mathematica way back when it was running on DOS in text mode and switched into graphics mode when I wanted to plot something. Later I switched to an early Windows version. Back then Macs were too expensive for me, but I loved that Mathematica was a free integral part of Macs! - Could you share your methods for generating and keeping track of ideas? Do you have favorite techniques for being productive?

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [August 9, 2024] Sep 20, 2024

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: How do galaxies form? - Is it true that animals can sense earthquakes? How? Why can't humans? - I always found it fascinating how birds pick up those fields to "get directions" on where to fly. - People with joint pain can often sense air pressure and humidity changes, and some develop a sense for when the weather will change as a result ("My knee hurts; the weather will change soon."). - What is the difference between speed and acceleration? - If energy is conserved, how we do we run out of it? - How do mutations or radiation effects affect biological evolution? - How size dependent is the universe? Could it be possible to create a mini-galaxy within a controlled environment here on Earth? - Is there fusion going on in a black hole?

History of Science & Technology Q&A (August 7, 2024) Sep 20, 2024

Show notes

Questions include: What is the history of data visualization? Was the discipline only able to flourish relatively recently with the introduction of computers, or is there a deep and rich history of people creating pictures by hand to extract visual insights from abstract data? - Nikola Tesla was building a machine for the wireless transmission of electricity. It seems like we're getting to a place where we can beam solar energy down to Earth from solar-harvesting satellites. I'm curious what Stephen's take on this is and the timeline for this research/what is needed to make it a reality. - From your perspective, what is the importance of compression functions in computer science? - Do we know who designed written language? Or are there still missing pieces in history such that we can't properly map out the history of written work? - What is the stage of development/history around implementing cellular automata in hardware, such as quantum dot cellular automata? What large-scale, hardware-accelerated simulations would be interesting? - I'm curious about the history of eyeglasses. Why has the tech not seem to have advanced much?

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (August 2, 2024) Sep 16, 2024

Show notes

Questions include: How do you envision the future of physics-informed neuroscience? In particular, do you believe that despite the brain being a warm environment, quantum effects such as entanglement and superposition play a role in its function? Finally, do you think the concept of "quantum cognition" will remain more philosophical than scientific? - Are microtubules like electrochemical transistors? - Could the concrete Boolean arithmetic functional devices in our brains be affected by temperature, or is temperature one layer above that? - Which do you think would happen first: repairing brains naturally through natural science research or having the first "computer brain" transplant for those who suffer brain traumas? - I've heard AI should be able to develop treatments for cancer, but it will take decades of machine learning. What do you think could accelerate this learning process? - Maybe not a cure, but a control? Micro-monitoring and cancer-killing nanobots? - Will we ever perfect the human immune system? - Do you think that the relevance weight of the "microbiome" in medical science will increase in the future? - Maybe not an artificial brain, but what about artificial hearts? Would those be easier to have a technological implant vs. a natural one? Or even livers or kidneys? - In the future, hopefully we can have a machine/detector that can detect every atom or molecule in our bodies, and we can simulate solutions on a fast computer.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected